Editor’s note: Greenwich High School junior Alexander Kosyakov won second place in the Greenwich First Selectman’s Community Diversity Advisory Committee’s ninth annual diversity writing contest.

With a New York Times in his teeth and the plastic outdoor chair from Home Depot in his hands, Mikhail Pavlovich trudged the 50 steps to the grave from his car which he had parked on the side of the road that wound itself through the cemetery. The grass under his feet squished with wetness from the April rains, its green blades immersed in mud.

He liked the idea of bringing the chair after watching the sixth “Rocky” movie again. Weekends these days were languid and lonely, so Mikhail watched movies and read books. But today he wanted some change of scenery. Besides, he hadn’t visited his son in a good while and there’s a kind of peace and stillness in a military cemetery that can’t be replicated.

The grave was in the first row. He unfolded and set down the chair several feet away from the headstone and slowly sat down. Before him stretched out the field of graves, all marked with uniform gray headstones placed in neat rows. Some had small American flags at their bases, while others were adorned with flowers. The field was bordered by a line of dark pines that swung gently in the brisk yet noiseless spring wind. Above the the pines was a blank, faceless gray sky — albeit slightly illuminated just above the trees where the sinking sun was veiled.

Mikhail sighed and unfolded his paper with his hands, which were now creased with wrinkles and scars. He put on his reading glasses and started leafing through the pages of the newspaper.

A man deported back to Vietnam saying, “If you ask me ‘do you want to come back to the U.S?’ I’ll give you the answer ‘yes’, but I don’t know how.” Mikhail turned the page. The headline “Australian government acknowledges immigrants are boon to economy.” He flipped the page again. “Arizona’s three state universities and its largest community college district say they will raise tuition immediately for young immigrants granted deferred deportation status in the wake of a court ruling,” read the first sentence of an article.

Mikhail curled his lip as he slowly shook his head with an emotion halfway between dismay and puzzlement. He remembered once having watched the movie “Spare Parts,” based on a true story, about a handful of poor Mexican immigrant teenagers who made a PVC robotic submarine that beat MIT at a competition. He like that movie. The characters reminded him of his son.

Mikhail was an immigrant, too. He left the Russian Federation as soon as it was born. He had come from a family of farmers and factory workers yet gotten a college degree in chemistry. He would’ve gotten a doctorate degree, too, had he not had to leave college for mandatory military service.

The fall of the Soviet Union brought down with it the country’s scientific community and Mikhail left for a job opportunity in Philadelphia. America. America. America. It was his, as Americans say, Hail Mary play. He arrived with nothing but the clothes and $100. The first thing he bought was an alarm clock.

Mikhail lived out of a room at a Red Roof Inn for four months until his scratched up enough money to bring his wife and son over. His work entailed building websites. He’d taken the job after reinventing his skill set with the voracious reading of computer science books after giving up on chemistry. He had learned it all on his own.

Mikhail’s son began attending public high school immediately with no knowledge of English and just one pair of jeans and three shirts comprising his closet. The Pavlovich family bought a house within the first year in America and for the next couple of years things began to look up for Mikhail.

Mikhail’s son worked hard in school and earned straight As. He flipped burgers at a diner in his free time to support the family and won a college scholarship. But he didn’t like college and dropped out eventually. He developed a drinking problem, which was common among the Pavloviches. At the same time, Mikhail had lost his job. Quite literally, his job was exported to India.

The Pavloviches reinvented themselves again; Mikhail learned sophisticated computer programming, again through books, while his wife worked tirelessly in laundromats, toys stores, and landscaping companies. Meanwhile, his son went into the Navy. Mikhail ended up finding a job writing code for a hedge fund. For a while, things settled down.

And then came the phone call from the Navy. The days of crying. More crying, church services, paperwork, and more crying. A funeral service, a deep hole in the ground, uniformed men carrying the casket, friends and officers from the navy. And then the shrill sound of the bugle cutting through the air as it played taps, the sound making the remaining silence oppressive, the hole in the ground matching the hole in Mikhail’s heart. Taps. Mikhail remembered taps.

Mikhail folded the paper and got up out of his chair almost automatically. The sun had set. The sky was quickly darkening — the pine trees in the distance a flat black against it. Mikhail folded the chair and walked back toward the shadow of his car. He wouldn’t despair about his American Dream. Not today. He had to finish some paperwork for his passport at home that night, anyway. He hadn’t seen his family in Russia since he’d left, and it was high time to visit their graves.